22 November 2011

Libya: The Lies of "Humanitarian" War

This document makes it possible to understand how international law and justice works, but mostly how its basic principles can be bypassed. The resolutions passed against Libya are based on various allegations: notably on the statement claiming that Gaddafi had led jet attacks on his own people and engaged in violent repression against the uprising, killing more than 6,000 civilians. These allegations were spread before they could have been verified. Yet it was on the basis of this claim that the Libyan Jamahiriya government was suspended from the United Nations Human Rights Council, before being referred to the United Nations Security Council. One of the main sources for the claim that Gaddafi was killing his own people is the Libyan League for Human Rights, an organisation linked to the International Federation of Human Rights (the FIDH). On the 21st of February 2011, the General-Secretary of the LLHR, Dr. Soliman Bouchuiguir, initiated a petition in collaboration with the organisation UN Watch and the National Endowment for Democracy. This petition was signed by more than 70 NGOs. Then a few days later, on the 25th of February, Dr. Soliman Bouchuiguir went to U.N. Human Rights Council in order to expose the allegations concerning the crimes of Gaddafi's government. In July 2011 we went to Geneva to interview Dr. Soliman Bouchuiguir. Soliman Bouchuguir is an unheard of figure for the most part....Soliman Bouchuiguir, former president of the Libyan League for Human Rights with symbiotic ties to the National Transitional Council, generated the pack of lies that justified NATO's war allegedly to protect the Libyan population. He is currently the new Libyan ambassador to Switzerland.

Comment:

It is important to understand that this video document provides proof about the fabrication of evidence of Gaddafi attacking protesters with planes, as alleged by the Libyan League for Human Rights, in order to get UN Security Council Resolution 1973 passed. In this video, those who voiced these allegations at the UN, confirm that they in fact had no evidence. Moreover, we discover that the membership of the Libyan League for Human Rights--which had unchallenged influence and prominence in the deliberations of the Security Council--is itself composed of many of the same people who make up the opposition National Transitional Council. The UN Security Council completely failed to question or verify the supposed "facts" being presented to it by those who had a vested interest in regime change. Humanitarianism was thus a false cover for military intervention to back the overthrow of the government of a UN member state, in direct violation of the UN Charter. This year saw the 10th anniversary of the "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine--at the young age of 10, R2P has apparently already entered a state of advanced senility.

This is the archive of what was formerly the webpage of AJP. It now consists entirely of the essays and posts published by AJP founder, Maximilian C. Forte, associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, at Concordia University in Montreal (maximilian.forte@concordia.ca). AJP was a Canadian organization for anthropologists interested in supporting struggles for self-determination, decolonizing knowledge production, and resisting the corporatization and militarization of the academy.